The Seed of Doubt
by GloriousBlackout
Summary: post-Reichenbach. A year has passed since Sherlock's suicide, and Sally can't help wondering if she was right about him, or whether her involvement just made everything worse. Now with additional chapter from Anderson's POV.
1. Sally

_**A/N - This is my first Sherlock story and admittedly it sounded a lot better in my head, but I hope you enjoy anyway :) Reviews are appreciated. **_

_**Contains spoilers to episode 3, 'The Reichenbach Fall'. This story is set around a year after the episode.**_

**_Disclaimer: I do not own 'Sherlock'. If I did then it wouldn't be nearly as well written and Sherlock and John would be a couple by now :D_**

Sally would have been lying if she said that the last year had been easy for her.

Admittedly, with the absence of Sherlock or Moriarty or whoever the freak had truly been pulling the strings, the cases were often significantly less stressful. Most criminals were caught within a matter of days at most. Sally was rarely called to a challenging case any more, if anything they were often rather simple; textbook domestic murders or a gang related incident that barely took up any of her time and definitely didn't require Lestrade's favourite 'detective' analysing the scene excitedly like a child at Christmas. With no criminal mastermind behind the scenes any more her work had almost become dull, although she discarded that thought when it reminded her of the freak complaining over boring cases.

That wasn't to say there wasn't any difficult cases however. At the beginning there had been little mention of Sherlock at the station, as if he were a bad dream that everyone wanted to go away, and that suited Sally just fine. The police started to believe that they hadn't needed Sherlock's help after all, that they weren't really as inferior as they'd been led to believe.

However occasionally they would be left feeling out of their depth. There was the child serial killer who still roamed the streets, abducting children as they walked home from school and leaving barely any clues except taunting messages to the police. Or there was the burglar who'd managed to break into a millionaire's locked apartment without leaving so much as a fingerprint. No-one could deny the slight gloom that spread throughout the office as these cases dragged on and on, the absence of the so-called 'consulting detective' playing on everyone's mind. Sally knew that Sherlock would probably have determined the criminals entire life story just by spending five minutes at the crime scene.

She almost missed the freak during these cases . For all his arrogance and the fact that he could be a complete bastard to anyone and get away with it, at least he'd solved the cases quickly and it ensured that her job was done almost as soon as it had begun. Not to mention the fact that John's blog and the photos of Sherlock in _that_ hat had always provided a good laugh in the office when it was needed.

However Sally would always return to the conclusion that, like the other cases he had taken delight in solving, Sherlock would probably have been the one behind it all in the first place.

She often wondered how a man so distant from other human beings could have enough contacts to arrange several murders, or bank robberies or even have some power over murderous Chinese smugglers. He must have been an amazing actor, she thought. After all he'd managed to fool Lestrade for years and even John, the only human being who could truly put up with the psychopath hadn't suspected a thing about him.

Sally almost felt pride in the fact that she'd never really trusted him. Hadn't she warned John that solving the crimes would never be enough for Sherlock, that one day they'd arrive at a crime scene and he'd be the one who put the body there? And yet, she was never really in the mood to feel self satisfaction any more. Too much had occurred because of her assumptions that Sherlock was a fraud.

There were times when she actually felt guilt over Sherlock's suicide, as if she were the one who was at fault for everything. Deep down she knew this couldn't be true. She was simply doing her job, she'd had suspicions and she needed to tell others this. She knew that had Sherlock just accepted his arrest rather than thrown himself off a building then she wouldn't have needed to give him a second thought. He would become just another criminal that it was her job to catch and punish and things would be fine. She may have been tempted to taunt him as he was being led into a police car but she knew she was much too professional to start a petty fight in front of so many police officers, especially in that moment.

She wished more than ever that he'd just come quietly now instead of killing himself.

Sally was hardly new to death, she had seen family members, victims in cases and even fellow police officers die before her eyes and every time she had moved on because she had to, or because she had grown used to it.

When she'd started experiencing slight guilt she'd always asked herself why the freak should be any different to the other deaths. She hadn't even liked him that much, nor had anyone for that matter. It wasn't as if he deserved any sympathy, after all those years of deceiving the police and the crimes he was connected to, the fact that anyone mourned him was more than he deserved.

And yet, there was always the knowledge that had Sally not been so suspicious of him, had she not involved Lestrade and the rest of the police, had she not come to the conclusion that he was a fraud then he might still be alive. That was what bothered her. She couldn't shake the fact that somehow, no matter how indirectly, she was responsible for his death.

This had never happened to her before.. During police raids she had sometimes been expected to carry a gun for self defence, but she had never pulled the trigger, much less killed anyone. Not even a criminal. Being responsible for the death of another human being was a burden she had been unwilling to carry, yet it rested in the back of her mind, no matter how stupid she knew that feeling was.

It wasn't like she'd pushed Sherlock off the edge of the hospital. She just happened to be one of many people who'd led him there. And despite the fact that she had fought and bickered with the man at almost every opportunity she knew that she had never hated him enough to want him dead.

Despite this she found herself hating the freak more than ever now thanks to her guilt. It seemed that even when he was dead he had to make life difficult for her.

What plagued her mind more than this though was the doubt. At the time she'd been certain of Sherlock's guilt, and she had had no reason not to be. How else could the little girl have been so terrified of him just by seeing his face, how else could he have deduced the exact whereabouts of the children from a single footprint? The freak had been clever, there was no denying that, but no human could be _that_ clever! His own intelligence had caused him to slip up, he'd made a deduction that was too brilliant and Sally had finally noticed.

The press had also received information that proved he was a fraud and even Lestrade had been forced to cooperate with the others against Sherlock. As for Moriarty, or Richard Brook as he was now known to be called, files had shown that he'd been Sherlock's toy all along, an actor performing the act of a criminal mastermind. The proof was all there. Sally had been right, there was no reason to question this.

A year on though, things seemed less certain. The press had grown tired of the fake detective but suddenly people started to crawl out of the woodwork, putting up posters and spraying graffiti all over London. The slogan 'Sherlock Holmes was not a fake!' was visible on almost every derelict building or street corner. People still believed in the Reichenbach hero.

Others had also come forward to the press or police with their stories of how the detective had solved a seemingly unsolvable crime, in order to try and clear his name. A young man named Chris Melas told of how Sherlock and John had helped him solve a case by fighting a comic book geek while dressed as ninjas. One man called Henry Knight had even come to London from Dartmoor reporting that Sherlock had been able to solve the case that had affected his life for twenty years with help from John and Lestrade, who Henry had greeted like like an old friend when they met. All of these stories were completely ridiculous of course, but in the case of Sherlock Holmes that just made them seem all the more possible.

None of this was helping Sally, it only fuelled the idea that she might have been wrong after all. Even Lestrade was beginning to believe that his friend hadn't really been a fraud, and spent what seemed like every waking hour trying to piece together information to prove this right. Sally wanted to tell him that he was wasting his time but seeing as this was the man who'd helped Sherlock overcome a drug addiction and who despite their differences had practically considered the man his friend, she didn't have the heart to try and stop him any more.

As for John... well Sally had only seen John once since he'd been led away by Sherlock as his 'hostage'.

The meeting had been both coincidental and brief: Sally had been to the cemetery in order to place flowers by her grandfather's grave. Usually it was her mother that came by and did this every week, but she'd been ill and Sally had offered to go instead, craving to get away from the stress of work for an afternoon.

She had been walking to his grave when she'd noticed a familiar face heading towards her. John Watson, the detective's pet, presumably heading back from visiting Sherlock's grave as dried tears were visible on his cheeks. He looked tired, and Sally could hardly blame him. For one cruel moment she almost considered uttering an 'I told you so' to him, or perhaps reminding him that he should have gotten himself a safer hobby rather than following Sherlock Holmes around, but even she couldn't bring herself to be that spiteful.

Instead they acknowledged each other with small nods and a quiet "hello" before continuing on their separate paths. There wasn't room for bitterness between them any more, it was pointless and unnecessary so she silently put to rest any remarks she had considered saying and silently thanked John for not throwing insults at her either. Only later that day as she returned home did she realise with a pang of guilt that John's limp had returned.

She couldn't tell how many times she'd gone over the night she'd gone against Sherlock since seeing John in order to convince herself that she'd done nothing wrong. Seeing how John had been affected only seemed to increase her feelings of doubt. Surely she hadn't let her dislike of Sherlock affect her judgement, had she? Perhaps she'd been so disgusted that somebody could kidnap and poison two young children that she'd started suspecting him purely because he didn't seem to care.

That didn't make sense though. Sherlock had never cared about a case, why should this have been any different? She wouldn't have imagined him caring about any other human being had she not seen him around John or heard from Lestrade that a man who had attacked his landlady, Mrs Hudson, just happened to 'fall' out of a window afterwards. Yet if there was any possibility of her being wrong then why had the child screamed? Why had Sherlock committed suicide? The child would never have seen him before, unless he was connected with their kidnapper, and Sally had known Sherlock well enough to know that whatever the press or anyone else said about him, he didn't care. So long as he believed in his own brilliance nothing else mattered. Sherlock dying because of false stories didn't make any sense to her. He had to have been a fraud, he had to have been against them all along. If she'd been wrong and helped to destroy an innocent man then... no, she didn't even want to think of that possibility.

Sherlock was just a criminal all along, nothing worth wasting her thoughts about any more. It had been a year since then, too long to change anything and no matter how deeply she tried to think about everything the results remained the same. Sherlock was still dead. Moriarty still didn't exist. John was still grieving. Lestrade still tried to deny that his 'friend' of five years had been a fraud.

And Sally still couldn't get that uncomfortable feeling of guilt to go away.

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><p><em><strong>Thanks for reading :) If anyone is interested, the case with Chris Melas can be found on John Watson's blog and is called, 'The Geek Interpreter'.<strong> _


	2. Anderson

**A/N It's been around six months but I finally found the time to write an extra chapter for this story. Apologies for the very long wait. I'm finding trying to imagine the reactions of these characters rather interesting so I may continue this further. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this additional chapter :)**

_Disclaimer: __I still don't own Sherlock :(_

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><p>The woman now lying in an old disused basement had died of strangulation, according to the information that had been reported to him before he'd entered the room. She'd been dead at least three hours it seemed and perhaps the finger-shaped bruises that had formed on her pale throat would tell him more later. However, try as he might, Anderson couldn't glean any more information from the unfortunate victim at this exact moment. And that irritated him greatly.<p>

He could hardly tell if the wedding ring on her finger indicated a long, happy marriage or a troubled one. Whether this woman had been a hard working businesswoman or a stay-at-home mum or even an international criminal. Where she'd been earlier that day. Whether she was even native to London at all.

No, it would take at least a day to fully break down this woman's life story and even then they'd need to rely on outside links. It was hardly like they had their favourite psychopath let loose around the crime scene like a dog without a leash, dancing around the body with a childlike glee as he revealed her most intimate secrets to the bewildered onlookers. They could hardly rely on a man who'd thrown himself off a building and cracked his head open. However it seemed that even the dead detective would be of more use here than Anderson at this precise moment, judging from the recent attitudes of his co-workers.

Still, he did what he could. He examined the body and gathered as much evidence from her as he possibly could before reporting his newly discovered information to Lestrade, who had spent the entire time looming silently in the doorway. Even with the weak source of light in the basement Anderson could clearly see the small smile that crept across his boss's face but he knew that it was hardly an expression of pride for his co-worker. He had that familiar faraway look in his eyes that suggested that he wasn't entirely present in the room. No, as usual his thoughts were with Sherlock.

Or rather, the imaginative and colourful insult that the detective would have predictably thrown at Anderson in response to his useless observations.

A lot of his co-workers treated him that way now, often more harshly than Lestrade who'd managed to keep any of his distaste towards Anderson fairly concealed. The others had generally been less tactful.

Anderson didn't understand it. They'd all despised the detective while he was still alive. Each one had leapt at the chance to arrest him following the kidnapping of the two children. He'd even spotted two of his fellow police officers hiding in the corner, making bets on how they imagined Sherlock would react. Neither had won. Sherlock's refusal to protest hadn't been predicted by many. That still hadn't affected any feelings towards him though. Sherlock had made them feel inferior and they'd relished the chance to make him feel the same way, gathering together at 221B like a pack of wild dogs.

And yet now, after he'd only been dead a year, they all missed him terribly and spoke fondly of him as if he'd been a god.

It was the longer hours probably. Working at Scotland Yard had grown considerably more difficult lately with the absence of their favourite detective. The information that would have taken Sherlock mere seconds to obtain now required several late nights. Cases which would have been wrapped up in a matter of days now dragged on for weeks. Anderson had tried to tell himself that he didn't mind, the extra work provided some well needed distractions. His co-workers begged to differ. They didn't willingly forgive when their holidays were at risk of becoming non-existent.

Anderson had taken the brunt of his work-mates scorn without complaint. After all, his involvement as one of the people who'd tried to convince Lestrade that his old friend was a dangerous criminal hadn't gone down too well as time went on. He had remained certain of that fact for a long time until recent developments had turned everything upside down. He could remember that in the earlier days, when the absence of the detective still loomed around the office like an unwanted burden, Sally had received similar treatment from their co-workers for her involvement in Sherlock's downfall. However over time she had eventually shown remorse for her actions and had appeared genuinely guilty for Sherlock's death, as if she was in some way responsible. Anderson had never betrayed any remorse. He'd simply got on with things, learning to ignore the sideways glances and childish giggles that were sent in his direction while he worked on crime scenes. He'd even ignored the frankly annoying pranks that had gotten old fast and had lost their fun after a while. He'd refused to give Sherlock the satisfaction of letting the actions of others get under his skin.

Or at least that had been his general attitude. Until, barely a month ago, Sherlock had finally been declared innocent thanks to the combined efforts of a police investigation, an unnamed source who had gained Lestrade's trust and the general public.

At first Anderson had tried to laugh about this and move on. After all, it was a year too late. Sherlock was hardly capable of showing gratitude for having his reputation restored.

However he'd allowed himself to dwell on the detective for too long, had finally let his co-workers words get to him. Now all he had left was a numb feeling of guilt. Because, irrational as this admission was, he had helped to kill an innocent man. And he hadn't even been doing it for the good of others. He'd wanted to impress Sally and improve his reputation at work. Finally get recognition he felt he deserved. Fat lot of good that had been.

In some strange, twisted way he almost missed the detective now. Yes, they had hated each other with a passion and he'd been forced to take every insult under the sun for the mere crime of being in the same room as Sherlock. However he realised now that there must have been some underlying level of trust within the detective, no matter how slim that feeling of trust was. There was no other reason he could think of for Sherlock continually allowing what he perceived to be a blundering idiot intrude on his precious crime scenes. Hate each other they may have done but never to the extent of wishing the other man dead. And that realisation stung.

Anderson owed Sherlock. There was no point denying that. From the moment the detective had started working on cases Anderson had received more attention, had been trusted with more interesting cases which had taken him away from the tedious monotony of office work. He'd even received a slight pay rise for his efforts after Sherlock's fifth case; not that he'd ever indulged Sherlock with this information.

And now the detective was gone. And, in the eyes of his co-workers at least, Anderson was barely worthy of a name.


End file.
